238 réponses à ce sujet

[Piecake]

solution_nine wrote...

cephasjames wrote... Also, now that the Player is voiced and we can kind of pick a personality, why not have the Player banter with the traveling party as well? The banter, imo, helps to get to know the companions better too.

S/he does! I was pleasantly surprised to see Hawke get involved in some of the random party banter.

I finished my game in about 50 hours and I didnt see Hawke participate in party banter once.  Perhaps I just picked the wrong combination of companions, but still, I would have liked it expanded upon because that definitely sounds cool.

I guess this does boil down to budget restrictions though.  This does bring up a convenient excuse for me to talk about what I want in DA3 - multiple player characters/perspectives.  I might be wrong on this since I don't know the details about how voice actors are hired, but besides the other benefits of constructing a narrative around 3 or so seperate playable characters, I think another benefit of this is that it would be a good way to save money on voice actors because you wont have to double up on male and female voice actors. 

One character you play can be female, the other can be male, the 3rd one can be an eunuch chimpmunk from outer space.  People get their female character, their male character, their dwarf character, and their whatever character without having to double up on voice actors or hire 12 voice actors for the same character if you go back to doing Origin stories.  Now, if there is some sort of base hiring fee for voice actors and it simply isnt how many lines spoken, then my glorious argument might not hold water, but still, if thats the case you could always hire someone who does a lot of voices!  Anyway, you'd be playing those characters for a significantly less lines anyways since if you have 3 playable characters, they would be only taking up 1/3 of the main character screen time. 

With all of this money I am saving you guys you can do player iniated companion dialogue without having to axe fetch quests!

[Yashmia]

I love the characters in DA2, but I agree. With the exception of Aveline (The entire courting quest made her one of my favorite characters), I didn't really feel close to any of the characters. Merrill was this twit that agreed with anything I said, and when Anders betrayed me I didn't really care, and I didn't know Isabella to really feel sorry about upset when I sacrificed her. I was actually more upset by the death of Thrask then anything that happened to my companions.

[David Gaider]

If Bioware didn't have the assets to create the ideal RPG (If we define an ideal RPG as one which all aspects of an RPG are ideally met which they clearly aren't regardless of how different our aspects of an RPG may be) then why go about creating it at all?

What kind of a question is that? It's never ideal-- do you think everyone agrees that DAO was ideal? I highly doubt it. We do the best we can with the resources at hand, and create the kind of game we believe in. Whether that meets someone's ideal of what they think an RPG should be isn't all that relevant. All one needs to do is visit your average "what is an RPG?" thread to see that opinions on the genre cover an entire spectrum.

If we allocate our resources differently in the future, we will do so with the intent of improving the experience-- but shifting the resources around will inevitably mean that they come from somewhere else. That was true in DAO just as it's true now.

Is there any way for us to see the budget you were given as well as the total budget that includes what EA spent on marketing as well?

No. What would you even do with such information? As near as I can tell, the average fan believes our budget should be infinite.

[Edge2177]

It's over 9000.

*helpful*

[BruderLoras]

David Gaider wrote...

We'll have to decide if it was worthwhile having all the companion quests. That's where a good deal of the word budget for companions went in comparison (remember in DAO you had one very short quest, if anything at all). From a writing perspective it's a much better way to get to know a companion, but perhaps it simply didn't come soon enough (the first personal quest starts in Act 2, after all) or perhaps that's not what some people want. Perhaps what they want is to ask their companions a bunch of questions, instead? Whether or not I think that's a less desireable way to approach it, if many people felt less connected it might have to be considered.

Regardless, I know that many will take the standard "well, why not do both?" approach to an answer. Yes, ideally you'd want to have lots of personal quests, be able to talk to companions whenever you wanted and ask them lots of questions, etc. etc. That's simply not practical, however. This is not the "talk to companions" game, and thus only so much of our resources can be devoted to it.

I don't hink I entirely agree with this - because I guess that for a great myany players, it in fact IS a "talk to companions" game. Bioware decided to break with the standard trope of "kill big bad, save world", which I applaud. The characters of Hawke and his companions are really at  the center of the story. Good! That makes it more role-play-y. Which IS Biowares strong suit.

But from my observations this could have been done more consequently. Aside from Hawke, the only Character that really had much development concerning their lives were Aveline and Merrill. That isn't to say the other character weren't well done - hell, let's do an example, shall we? Fenris has a lot of stuff going on in his quests over the years. Learn about past, learn of surviving family, overcome old burdens, betrayals, gain friend. All good. But nothing of this seems to have any impact on him besides the conversations were those events are resolved. He continues to live in the same unchanged, post-battle rotting mansion (hopefully at least tossing the bodies out), he never questions or adapts any one of his stances or opinons in many years of friendship - basically, if I hadn't had those conversations and just visited him at a later stage in the game I wouldn't know anything was different for him compared to the beginning. Varric is another prime example of this.

Same thing about the relationships really - I have been with Merrill for what? Three years? And yet that seems to have remarkably little impact on our interactions. Mind you, it was more extensive than in Origins and I can't think of a game that did it better, but there is room for improvement. In short, this is a story of a hero's (and his companions) ascension over the years, but most of the characters seem to do very little actual ascending. Not a complaint, but whenever I hear people talk about your games it is the characters that are the focus of the conversations. Just some food for thought.

[RazorrX]

As far as companions and such go, I actually prefer the DA2 companions. I love the banter between them, I loved how you would get a glimpse of them interacting with one another outside of your influence (like when we see Isabela and Aveline sharing a bottle in Av's office). The dialog between you and your companions was quite well done in my opinion. Rather than the odd way DA:A did it, or the all at once method in DA:O it was spread out and more context oriented, which I enjoyed.

And Isabela is now my favorite LI and Varic is my favorite Bro.

[Legbiter]

Huh, if anything I found the DA II companions to be consistently better than the DA I crew. Special mention to Varric, I think he's in a league of his own really. More subtle too, you could tick off the archetype box 30 seconds after meeting every companion in DA I. DA II companions (excepting that elven twink) took a bit longer to peg in my opinion.

[Danjaru]

David Gaider wrote...

Yes, when the writers talked about how things ended up, one of our own observations was that Act 1 ended up being considerably longer than was intended-- so players went a fair length of time after that first dialogue without anything extensive. Front-loading the conversations a bit more, rather than having the sole post-recruitment dialogue, would probably have worked a little better insofar as getting to know characters went.

We'll have to decide if it was worthwhile having all the companion quests. That's where a good deal of the word budget for companions went in comparison (remember in DAO you had one very short quest, if anything at all). From a writing perspective it's a much better way to get to know a companion, but perhaps it simply didn't come soon enough (the first personal quest starts in Act 2, after all) or perhaps that's not what some people want. Perhaps what they want is to ask their companions a bunch of questions, instead? Whether or not I think that's a less desireable way to approach it, if many people felt less connected it might have to be considered.

Regardless, I know that many will take the standard "well, why not do both?" approach to an answer. Yes, ideally you'd want to have lots of personal quests, be able to talk to companions whenever you wanted and ask them lots of questions, etc. etc. That's simply not practical, however. This is not the "talk to companions" game, and thus only so much of our resources can be devoted to it.

Well, those short quests (like taking Alistair to see his sister, or Oghren to see his old flame) felt much more genuine and involving than BUTCHERING DOZENS OF NPC'S TO HELP AVELINE ON A DATE. It's longer sure, but it's stupid. Even the simplest quests like gathering some stuff ended up in blood baths, they weren't better cause they were longer. They were only longer cause of the mountains of enemies you had to kill.

I mean, if you'd done Alistair's quest in DA2. You'd probably have spawning points in his sisters house with 30+ enemies for no apparent reason. Longer = better, right? (I'm aware that that's probably not the writers fault but the level designers, but claiming length is a good thing is false)

Modifié par Danjaru, 15 mars 2011 - 01:11 .

[canticl]

BruderLoras wrote...

I don't hink I entirely agree with this - because I guess that for a great myany players, it in fact IS a "talk to companions" game. Bioware decided to break with the standard trope of "kill big bad, save world", which I applaud. The characters of Hawke and his companions are really at  the center of the story. Good! That makes it more role-play-y. Which IS Biowares strong suit.

Same thing about the relationships really - I have been with
Merrill for what? Three years? And yet that seems to have remarkably
little impact on our interactions. Mind you, it was more extensive than
in Origins and I can't think of a game that did it better, but there is
room for improvement. In short, this is a story of a hero's (and his
companions) ascension over the years, but most of the characters seem to
do very little actual ascending. Not a complaint, but whenever I hear
people talk about your games it is the characters that are the focus of
the conversations. Just some food for thought.

I wholly agree. Coming from pen-and-paper D&D, I missed the richness of good story telling that goes into the RPG experience in many computer games, chief among these interacting with NPCs with depth. Bioware stands heads atop other game developers, and I cheer them on with the hope they continue to improve on this aspect.

But speaking realistically, I imagine that there are considerable restraints in the game development. With all due respect to everyone involved in the product, I believe the heart of the matter lies in the interaction between the creative writers and the software developers. Writers would like to flesh out NPC, not just wrt their back stories but also their character growth as the game progresses -- that is, to apply the brush strokes to bring to light the soul of the companions. However, software developers have to grapple with the explosion of combinatorial events and outcomes. It's not easy.

I'm involved in software development professionally, and I know how the gap between designers and coders is fraught with misunderstanding and compromises. But what encourages me are the sophistication of the authoring tools that Bioware has put out. Just take the dialoge editor, for example; this tool leverages the nuts and bolts of software to facilitate a very creative process --  humanizing the NPC. Just look at the excellent results: dialog in DA:O and DA:2 succeeds in suspending disbelief and drawing the player into the simulated reality. The outcome has been very delightful.

My instinct tells me the key to taking the craft to the next level lies in the toolset. Better software tools will enable creative writers to embellish the companions; better tools will also assist coders to tackle the multiplicity of outcomes arising from the player's choices. The game product improves.

But from my observations this could have been done more consequently. Aside from Hawke, the only Character that really had much development concerning their lives were Aveline and Merrill. That isn't to say the other character weren't well done - hell, let's do an example, shall we? Fenris has a lot of stuff going on in his quests over the years. Learn about past, learn of surviving family, overcome old burdens, betrayals, gain friend. All good. But nothing of this seems to have any impact on him besides the conversations were those events are resolved. He continues to live in the same unchanged, post-battle rotting mansion (hopefully at least tossing the bodies out), he never questions or adapts any one of his stances or opinons in many years of friendship - basically, if I hadn't had those conversations and just visited him at a later stage in the game I wouldn't know anything was different for him compared to the beginning.

Gee, I'm playing a male mage and haven't picked up Fenris yet. What you wrote here sounds like Selina Kyle (a.k.a. Cat Woman) expresssing disappointment with Bruce Wayne.

[JakePT]

On crying, I don't think the lack of special effects on the eyes is the impediment. I think you can easily get away with a character crying through the right kind of acting in the voice, good facial animation and body language. A perfect example is the Viscount, when his son dies. There's no sound, no tears, no red eyes, just the combination of the sobbing motion and the closed eyes that really effectively conveys the emotion. It's kind of a remarkable piece of animation, since it conveys the characters emotion far better than any other scene in the game. Part of that may be because that particular kind of reaction to grief is almost never depicted in games or animation.

Also, I just wanted to say that I actually think companion quests are an inferior form of character development. Intuitively it seems like it should be, since you're devoting a whole section to that character, but based on what I've played of Origins, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and now Dragon Age 2 I think the better way of doing character development is simply by allowing the player to have conversations with them not directly tied to a specific quest and by having their character be developed through their dialog and actions in the main plot.

The advantage with this is that it contrasts with other characters in the same situation, instead of putting them all in their own contained stories where the events that occur are specifically tied to that character and you can't see or imagine how other characters would act in that situation because it would never happen to them. I think it's much more interesting to see characters in that way, rather than kind of breaking out the character development into its own quest line that isn't necessarily tied into the main story.

Not that Dragon Age 2's character development wasn't effective, it absolutely was, I just think that the way it was done wasn't the best way it could have been. Same goes for Mass Effect 2 (which I absolutely love anyway).

Oh, and it would also help if the characters development didn't occur before the events that triggered it!

[e-ver]

I am with those, who prefer Origin's approach to companions and relationship development.

Each one of DA2's companions was excellently designed and very well written, I can appreciate that from an external perspective. But as a player, I felt a lot less connected to them. In previous games with a party (Origins, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights II), I would always sit stunned when watching the epilogue, fighting back tears (a losing battle), because I was so sad that my time with those wonderful NPCs had come to an end. In DA2 it was more like: "Ok, so that's that. I'm going to wash the dishes now." Of course, this probably has something to do with the fact, that there simply are no epilogue slides, but still, I didn't experience that feeling of loss that I'm used to from other games. It also happened ingame: for example deciding Anders' fate was a lot easier, than deciding Alistair's at the Landsmeet.
To me DA2's companions felt more like associates or simply people with (occasionally) aligned interests, not like friends or comrades.

Most points have been adressed in the thread, I don't want to repeat things others have already said. I do have a few points though that - I think - haven't come up yet.


1. Freedom of choice

DA2 took away a lot of freedom from the player, for example the freedom to choose your character (race, backstory, etc.) or the freedom to pursue the mainquest in whichever way the player wanted to (contrary to Origins, where you could choose between going to Redcliff, Orzammar, etc.). I don't like it, but I do understand why it was done in this particular game and anyway, those are not relevant in regards to this thread.
But it also took away a lot of the player's freedom when it comes to developing relationships with the companions. And that, in my opnion, is not justified simply by the fact that DA2 is the kind of game it is (framed narrative, etc.).
Sure, giving the player that kind of freedom also means they are free to abuse it, for example by burning through most of the dialogue at the beginning - and then complaining either about all the boring walls of text or about the fact, that the companions don't have anything to say for the rest of the game.
On the other hand this freedom gives us fantastic opportunities for roleplaying. For example my Dalish Warden: She asked Zevran if he enjoyed being an assassin at night in camp, when she was very troubled because she had just killed the Connor-Abomination. She took him alone to the Brecilian Forest to present him with the Dalish gloves. Their romance started in the Deep Roads, because she was so freaked out by being underground and all, that she finally let her guard down towards him. I could go on and on, but I guess I've made my point. Being able to initiate those conversations wherever I wanted, made the game so much more enjoyable to me.
In DA2 the relationships (both romantic and otherwise) develop as if on rails. To a lesser extent, this was already the case in Awakening and now in DA2 even more so. In my opinion this approach is very much inferior.


2. The party camp or lack thereof

While I am aware that some might not agree with me and while I am also aware that it simply didn't make sense having a camp in DA2, I miss having one. Not only, because I thoroughly enjoyed seeing everyone gathered in one place and have a chat with some of them, but also, because the camp served another purpose as a game mechanic: Even though you only ever had three people with you in the party, they were all there in the camp at night. This gave the impression, that your whole group travels with you, all the time, wherever you go. They were "your people". I think this is also an important factor when connecting with the companions.
Initially I liked the idea of every companion having their own place in DA2 very much. But now that I've experienced it, I thinks it's a bit problematic. The camp made me bond with my companions, even if I didn't talk to everyone every time. Just seeing Sten watching stoically, Morrigan doing her thing a little way away, Zevran standing near the fire, because it's just so frickin cold in Ferelden, and so on. DA2 lacks a gathering point for the whole group. The Hanged Man would have been an obvious choice, but the only ones you meet there are Varric and Isabela, because it's where they live.


3. The middle ground

In my opinion, Sten is a very good example for reaching this elusive and promising place: the middle ground.
He does offer a limited variety of topics to talk about, but to really get to know him, you have to take him with you, because some of his topics only unlock if he makes a comment during travelling (for example you have to bring him to the Circle Tower to be able to learn about qunari mages and his views on the matter). In later conversations you can follow up on those unlocked topics, three times per topic, if I remember correctly.
This way, you prevent players from burning through the dialogue in the first hours, but you still allow them to talk about it when and where they want.

Modifié par Allerleihrau, 15 mars 2011 - 02:17 .

[MCPOWill]

I am going to say that Dragon Age II had a better set of companion that DAO, Hey I've even say better then ME2 and ME2 had some damn good characters in it. See what I have found Bioware to exceptionally good at is adding more depth to an already conceived idea, such as the Geth in Mass 2 and the Darkspawn in Awakening. But to get back to the characters, the set that you had in DA II were better crafted not because DAO had bad characters, it didn't they were great. What DA II was allow to live your life with then, they were you friends or rivals depending as time went by and even that could can. Because the game's story takes place over a period of ten years you are able to see your companions live life instead of fighting for it.

[JakePT]

Allerleihrau wrote...
2. The party camp or lack thereof

While I am aware that some might not agree with me and while I am also aware that it simply didn't make sense having a camp in DA2, I miss having one. Not only, because I thoroughly enjoyed seeing everyone gathered in one place and have a chat with some of them, but also, because the camp served another purpose as a game mechanic: Even though you only ever had three people with you in the party, they were all there in the camp at night. This gave the impression, that your whole group travels with you, all the time, wherever you go. They were "your people". I think this is also an important factor when connecting with the companions.
Initially I liked the idea of every companion having their own place in DA2 very much. But now that I've experienced it, I thinks it's a bit problematic. The camp made me bond with my companions, even if I didn't talk to everyone every time. Just seeing Sten watching stoically, Morrigan doing her thing a little way away, Zevran standing near the fire, because it's just so frickin cold in Ferelden, and so on. DA2 lacks a gathering point for the whole group. The Hanged Man would have been an obvious choice, but the only ones you meet there are Varric and Isabela, because it's where they live.

This is a very interesting point. I'm the kind of player who picks my party pretty early, and never changes it. It origins I was always taking the same three people, but when I went back to camp, they were all there and I could talk to them (even if that amounted to only Dog and Oghren, as I didn't recruit everyone). That did give a sense that they were part of my team. However, in DA2 the fact that they were off in their own location and I never took them anywhere made them only little more than NPCs. I never took Sebastian anywhere, outside his quests, which were brief. To me at the end of the game he didn't mean anything more to me than Hubert or Seneschal Bran. There was never even the illusion that my character and he ever did anything together outside spending an hour fighting together out of 7 years.

[PsychoBlonde]

Merci357 wrote...

I disagree, somewhat. If you have a companion consistently in your party, over the whole game, you'll notice they have a lot of character, as well. There is tons of banter, they have quite often something to say. So, yes, the characters I had in my party did grow on me - Aveline, Varric, Merril.
On the other had, I never had Fenris with me, and he is still a complete stranger, because I had no real opportunity the speak with him. So yes, that's the part I agree - I'd like to talk to my companions (much) more often.

This was my experience as well--the people I had in my party (and  I had Aveline/Varric/Fenris for 95% of the game, except when I was doing the quests of the others) felt like fleshed-out characters.  The ones I didn't take along . . . didn't.  (I had Isabela in my party precisely twice, once when you do her initial quest and once when you go after the relic--I had more of a relationship with CULLEN than I did with her.)

I think this has more to do with the nature of the characters in question (and the game) than with the particular conversation mechanic, though.  DA2 has a LOT of very SHORT quests that involve basically no travel time, whereas in Origins, you had fewer, larger areas.  So if you took a given companion with you to an area in Origins, you'd probably wind up hitting *several* situations with them and there would be some commentary or something.  Whereas in DA2, you'd usually take them directly to the ONE DUNGEON you wanted to do, do the dungeon, get their final reaction, and then ditch them and pick your standard group back up in order to go work on some other quest.

I think, for me, some of this is also a result of my extreme familiarity with Origins.  IIRC on my first Origins playthrough, most of the companions felt really flat, and it wasn't until later playthroughs when I learned how to operate them, in a sense, that I actually got to see a lot of their depth and complexity.

[Piecake]

BruderLoras wrote...

I don't hink I entirely agree with this - because I guess that for a great myany players, it in fact IS a "talk to companions" game. Bioware decided to break with the standard trope of "kill big bad, save world", which I applaud. The characters of Hawke and his companions are really at  the center of the story. Good! That makes it more role-play-y. Which IS Biowares strong suit.

But from my observations this could have been done more consequently. Aside from Hawke, the only Character that really had much development concerning their lives were Aveline and Merrill. That isn't to say the other character weren't well done - hell, let's do an example, shall we? Fenris has a lot of stuff going on in his quests over the years. Learn about past, learn of surviving family, overcome old burdens, betrayals, gain friend. All good. But nothing of this seems to have any impact on him besides the conversations were those events are resolved. He continues to live in the same unchanged, post-battle rotting mansion (hopefully at least tossing the bodies out), he never questions or adapts any one of his stances or opinons in many years of friendship - basically, if I hadn't had those conversations and just visited him at a later stage in the game I wouldn't know anything was different for him compared to the beginning. Varric is another prime example of this.

Same thing about the relationships really - I have been with Merrill for what? Three years? And yet that seems to have remarkably little impact on our interactions. Mind you, it was more extensive than in Origins and I can't think of a game that did it better, but there is room for improvement. In short, this is a story of a hero's (and his companions) ascension over the years, but most of the characters seem to do very little actual ascending. Not a complaint, but whenever I hear people talk about your games it is the characters that are the focus of the conversations. Just some food for thought.

I somewhat disagree.  Every character does not have to go through  some personal struggle that challenges their beliefs and who gain a new perspective if the character suceeds.  Is it good that a few characters go through that type of process?  Yes, of course, but if all of your companions went through that I think it would feel forced and unnatural. 

Perhaps this is just showing my personal biases, but I don't think the majority of people truly change, and if in the next game, suddenly all of my companions are going through personal epiphanies, I don't think I would like it.  It would be too much.  I don't think a good character has to go through some dramatic revelation or change to be considered a good character.  Can a good character go through that?  Sure, and if it is well done, it can be really really interesting.  But I think a good character can simply be wel-developed and well-defined, and I think it is a good idea to have a mix of the two

Modifié par Piecake, 15 mars 2011 - 06:19 .

[Wildcat84]

My biggest problem with DA2 is how FORCE FED the story is.  It's as if Bioware has fallen so in love with their storytelling that they no longer want the player to be able to "screw it up", ie to have any significant influence in it.

DA2 is to DAO as KOTOR2 was to KOTOR.  Still a decent game but definitely inferior to the original.

[vigna]

Hmmmm. This is interesting. As a person that will only play Male/female or female/female Hawks (just accept my crazy ways) I feel limited by the romance/companion options. For a change I think female or male/male romance options get the better end of this game.
I liked Merrill overall, but didn't get to play with Isabella long enough in my party. Both female characters had traits I completely disliked...and nearly hated. While this is probably considered realistic I just felt neither affected me in the way of DA:O NPCs. Merrill never mentioned you slaughtering her village, Like she didn't care. That irked me. Isabella was willing to let a war happen with who knows how many innocent lives lost to keep her treasure. Both characters were so deeply flawed...I only half-heartily romanced. I could see a vagabond/dark Hawk wooing Isabella, but I don't see how others could.
These characters are pretty dark.

Modifié par vigna, 15 mars 2011 - 07:11 .

[Piecake]

vigna wrote...

Hmmmm. This is interesting. As a person that will only play Male/female or female/female Hawks (just accept my crazy ways) I feel limited by the romance/companion options. For a change I think female or male/male romance options get the better end of this game.
I liked Merrill overall, but didn't get to play with Isabella long enough in my party. Both female characters had traits I completely disliked...and nearly hated. While this is probably considered realistic I just felt neither affected me in the way of DA:O NPCs. Merrill never mentioned you slaughtering her village, Like she didn't care. That irked me. Isabella was willing to let a war happen with who knows how many innocent lives lost to keep her treasure. Both characters were so deeply flawed...I only half-heartily romanced. I could see a vagabond/dark Hawk wooing Isabella, but I don't see how others could.
These characters are pretty dark.

The Merrill thing is a known bug.

[Azzlee]

BruderLoras wrote...
Same thing about the relationships really - I have been with Merrill for what? Three years? And yet that seems to have remarkably little impact on our interactions. Mind you, it was more extensive than in Origins and I can't think of a game that did it better, but there is room for improvement. In short, this is a story of a hero's (and his companions) ascension over the years, but most of the characters seem to do very little actual ascending. Not a complaint, but whenever I hear people talk about your games it is the characters that are the focus of the conversations. Just some food for thought.

I'm not sure what you mean here mate. Can I ask for some elaboration please?

Whilst I most certainly respect your opinion (it is personal choice afterall) but I am firmly in the camp that DA:O offered far greater, and overreaching companion interaction compared with DA:2, by quite a large margin. I do not believe in what seemed like a very short amount of time, you get Merrill to bed, she immediately says she loves you (why?) and then you offer her to move in with you. Then nothing. This was tacky and lacks any form of depth. All she kept saying to me something about her shoes and something to do with how messy her house was. Forcing character interaction between the companions only cheapened the appeal. They knew each other better than I not only knew myself, but they knew each other better than I did.

It took me a long time to romance, i guess her equivilant in Leliana, and she sang around camp and even made the big guy Sten turn his head. You could spend lots and lots of time with her just listening to her stories and life in Orlais, much like Zevran. The same with Wynne's past and her issues. Both Wynne and Leiliana had firm belief in the Mages and the Chantry becuase that is who they are and there were consequences for hacking the mages and defiling Andrastes Ashes. Restoring Stens pride and honor and his somewhat testing of your ability as a warrior. Oghren's infatuation with fine ale and the ladies and Zevran's wish only to have a good friend for once in his somewhat miserable existence and to touch Wynne's bosom! And Shale, everyones most favourite girly golum with a unhealthy fetish for dead pigeons and sparkly stones. And rightly so being a statue for as long as she was. Of course, splitting Caradin in half wouldn't sit well and there was consequence. 

I totally agree with the whole "all in one" camp thing from DA:O that others have mentioned. Being hit by loading screens and going back and forth from place X to Y just to get a brief 1:30 conversation with characters destroyed, for me personally, all semblence of interaction and the companion quests never really added to my relationship with any character as all they said was thanks then went back to mumbling nonsense. Relying on panter banter, which there was too much of most of the time, and sometimes poorly timed and of very little relevance to me, was a very clear indication that the budget for DA2 was far less than the budget that was given to DA:O.

[Marcy3655]

JohnEpler wrote...

To address a (seemingly minor) quibble -

So long as you can adjust your eye size and shape, it is difficult-to-impossible to get a good looking 'cry' on the main character. We actually gave it a few shots, and nothing that came together really looked good. I wouldn't mind getting the opportunity to do it on a future project, but it could end up with some really weird stuff going on.

I don't think it'd have to be anything excessive, perhaps just - 1. a sad expression, 2. close eyes, 3. hands over face...

that worked for me in another scene that didn't have all the shiny stuff on the cheeks or a lot of anims going on..

just a thought, I'm not an animator so I don't know but even a few small things can really pack a punch...

M

[hawat333]

I have to agree with the OP.
DA:O gave us a better insight to the companions, telling their regrets and desires, fears, hatred and compassion.
In DA2 we merely get a few conversations, which aren't bad. I admire the fact that they interact with each other (the friendship between Isabela and Aveline was a compelling rhing to see), and they frequently adding lines to the given dialogue when questing or running around with Hawke.
Yet we should have more conversations or encounters that effect them, as... well, we got at least as complex characters as in the first game, but we simply have no opportunity to discover them, and therefore they become nothing more but tropes. Good tropes, I might add, but I was said when I realized I cannot discover their inner depths.

[Doright36]

Piecake wrote...

solution_nine wrote...

cephasjames wrote... Also, now that the Player is voiced and we can kind of pick a personality, why not have the Player banter with the traveling party as well? The banter, imo, helps to get to know the companions better too.

S/he does! I was pleasantly surprised to see Hawke get involved in some of the random party banter.

I finished my game in about 50 hours and I didnt see Hawke participate in party banter once.  Perhaps I just picked the wrong combination of companions, but still, I would have liked it expanded upon because that definitely sounds cool.

I guess this does boil down to budget restrictions though.  This does bring up a convenient excuse for me to talk about what I want in DA3 - multiple player characters/perspectives.  I might be wrong on this since I don't know the details about how voice actors are hired, but besides the other benefits of constructing a narrative around 3 or so seperate playable characters, I think another benefit of this is that it would be a good way to save money on voice actors because you wont have to double up on male and female voice actors. 

One character you play can be female, the other can be male, the 3rd one can be an eunuch chimpmunk from outer space.  People get their female character, their male character, their dwarf character, and their whatever character without having to double up on voice actors or hire 12 voice actors for the same character if you go back to doing Origin stories.  Now, if there is some sort of base hiring fee for voice actors and it simply isnt how many lines spoken, then my glorious argument might not hold water, but still, if thats the case you could always hire someone who does a lot of voices!  Anyway, you'd be playing those characters for a significantly less lines anyways since if you have 3 playable characters, they would be only taking up 1/3 of the main character screen time. 

With all of this money I am saving you guys you can do player iniated companion dialogue without having to axe fetch quests!

Were you by chance playing as a female hawke? I ask because at first I thought certain comments were being made by Avaline and then later realized it wasn't when I had a party with Hawke being the only female other than Merril and heard her make a wise crack about a conversation.

I am thinking perhaps you did hear it and just did something similar thinking one of the other girls said those lines.

Modifié par Doright36, 16 mars 2011 - 09:46 .

[AlexXIV]

David Gaider wrote...

If Bioware didn't have the assets to create the ideal RPG (If we define an ideal RPG as one which all aspects of an RPG are ideally met which they clearly aren't regardless of how different our aspects of an RPG may be) then why go about creating it at all?

What kind of a question is that? It's never ideal-- do you think everyone agrees that DAO was ideal? I highly doubt it. We do the best we can with the resources at hand, and create the kind of game we believe in. Whether that meets someone's ideal of what they think an RPG should be isn't all that relevant. All one needs to do is visit your average "what is an RPG?" thread to see that opinions on the genre cover an entire spectrum.

If we allocate our resources differently in the future, we will do so with the intent of improving the experience-- but shifting the resources around will inevitably mean that they come from somewhere else. That was true in DAO just as it's true now.

Is there any way for us to see the budget you were given as well as the total budget that includes what EA spent on marketing as well?

No. What would you even do with such information? As near as I can tell, the average fan believes our budget should be infinite.

No, the average fan believes your budget should be higher, not infinite.

Other than that I really think the companions are partly better and partly worse. Depending on personal point of view I guess. Fenris for example is sort of the Oghren of DA2 for me. That's of course only my personal feeling about it. Not that they are the same character, but both of them are characters I try to avoid as much as possible. The next in line would be Shale and Anders. Shale because I don't like her attitude at all. And Anders because I really don't want my Hawke to be seen with him in the public. He is a sort of terrorist after all.

My favorite Characters are Morrigan and Sten for DA:O and Varric, Merrill and Aveline for DA2. To be honest the only real reason I think DA2 characters are not better than DA:O characters is Morrigan.

Oh and I should maybe add that even though I had a different opinion pre-game, that I absolutely love female Hawke's voice. I am still not skipping dialgues just because I like the way she says things.

Modifié par AlexXIV, 16 mars 2011 - 10:32 .

[Denpos1]

I do wish there was more opportunities to talk with your companions in private and asking about stuff but frankly there was a lot of lovely banter and the side quests was really great about them so i dont think it too bad... I loved it but if there was more opportunities to talk and ask more about their past and other things and how they feel with the events that happen... that would be perfection but nonetheless... I was happy still!